by Dave Mckay
At last they took a change and started to put their heads together in the tent and talk low and secretly two or three hours at a time. Jim and me got worried. We didn’t like the look of it. We judged they was studying up some kind of worse trouble than ever. We turned it over and over, and at last we started to believe they was going to break into someone’s house or shop, or was going into the counterfeit money business, or something. So then we was pretty scared, and agreed that we wouldn’t have nothing in the world to do with such actions, and if we ever got the least show we would give them the cold shake and take off and leave them behind. Well, early one morning we put the raft in a good, safe place about two miles below a little piece of a poor village named Pikesville, and the king he went off and told us all to stay hiding while he went up to town and smelled around to see if anyone had got any wind of The King’s Foolishness there yet. (“House to rob, you mean,” says I to myself; “and when you get through robbing it you’ll come back here and want to know what has become of me and Jim and the raft -- and you’ll have to take it out in wanting to know.”) And he said if he weren’t back by noon the duke and me would know it was all right, and we was to come along.
So we stayed where we was. The duke he seemed worried and angry. He shouted at us for everything, and we couldn’t seem to do nothing right; he found something wrong with every little thing. Something was up, for sure. I was good and glad when noon come and no king; we could have a change, anyway -- and maybe find a way to get away on top of it. So me and the duke went up to the village, and hunted around there for the king. After hours of hunting we found him in the back room of a little pub, very drunk, and a lot of lazy young men making fun of him for sport, and he shouting angry things at them with all his strength, and so drunk he couldn’t walk, and couldn’t do nothing to them. The duke he started to shout at him too, and the king started to talk back, and the minute they was going at it with each other I backed off and shook the dust off my back legs, and raced down the river road like a deer, for I see our hope of freedom; and I told myself it would be a long day before they would ever see me and Jim again. I got down there breathing heavily, but full of happiness and shouted out: “Cut her loose, Jim! we’re all right now!”
But there weren’t no answer, and nobody come out of the tent. Jim was gone! I set up a shout -- and then another -- and then another; and run this way and that through the trees, shouting; but it weren’t no use -- old Jim was gone. Then I sat down and cried; I couldn’t help it. But I couldn’t sit still long. Pretty soon I went out on the road, trying to think what I better do, and I run across a boy walking, and asked him if he’d seen a strange black man dressed so and so, and he says: “Yes.”
“Where?” says I.
“Down to Silas Phelps’ place, two mile below here. He’s a slave that run away, and they got him. Was you looking for him?”
“You can be sure I ain’t! I run across him in the trees about an hour or two ago, and he said if I shouted he’d cut my intestines out -- and told me to sit down and stay where I was; and I done it. Been there ever since; afraid to come out.”
“Well,” he says, “you needn’t be afraid no more, because they’ve got him. He run off from down South, somewhere.”
“It’s a good job they got him.”
“Well, I should think so! There’s two hundred dollars reward on him. It’s like finding money on the road.”
“Yes, it is -- and I could a had it if I’d been big enough; I seen him first. Who nailed him?”
“It was an old man -- a stranger -- he sold his right to him for forty dollars, because he’s got to go up river and can’t wait. Think of it, now! You know I’d wait, if it was seven years.”
“That’s me, every time,” says I. “But maybe his right ain’t worth no more than that, if he’ll sell it so cheap. Maybe there’s something ain’t straight about it.”
“But it is -- straight as a string. I seen the advertisement myself. It tells all about him, to the last word -- paints him like a picture, and tells the farm he’s from, below New Orleans. Oh no, they ain’t no trouble about that one, I’m sure. Say, give me a chew of tobacco, won’t you?”
I didn’t have none, so he left. I went to the raft, and sat down in the tent to think. But I couldn’t come to nothing. I thought until my head was sore, but I couldn’t see no way out of the trouble. After all this long trip, and after all we’d done for them snakes, here it was all come to nothing, everything all broken and destroyed, because they could have the heart to do Jim such a trick as that, and make him a slave again all his life, and with strangers, too, for forty dirty dollars.
At one point I said to myself it would be a thousand times better for Jim to be a slave at home where his family was, if he was going to be a slave at all, and so I’d better write a letter to Tom Sawyer and tell him to tell Miss Watson where he was. But I soon give up that plan for two things: she’d be angry at him for leaving her, and so she’d sell him straight down the river again; and if she didn’t, everybody just hates a black man who is not thankful, and they’d make Jim feel it all the time, and so he’d feel awful and to blame. And then think of me!
It would get all around that Huck Finn helped a black man to get his freedom; and if I was ever to see anyone from that town again I’d be ready to get down and kiss his shoes for being so bad. That’s just the way: a person does a low-down thing, like I done, and then he don’t want to live with the effects of it. Thinks as long as he can hide, it ain’t nothing wrong with it. That was where I was for sure. The more I studied about this the more my conscience went to hurting me, and the more evil and low-down and wrong I got to feeling. And at last, it hit me that here was the hand of God himself slapping me in the face and letting me know my sin was being watched all the time from up there in heaven, while I was robbing a poor old woman’s servant that hadn’t ever done me no wrong, and now he was showing me there’s One that’s always watching, and ain’t a-going to let no such awful doings to go only just so far and no farther, I almost dropped on my knees I was so scared.
Well, I tried the best I could to kind of make it easier on myself by saying I was brought up evil, and so I weren’t so much to blame; but something inside of me kept saying, “There was the Sunday school, you could a gone to it; and if you’d a done it they’d a learned you there that people that acts as I’d been acting about that slave goes to eternal fire.”
It made me shake. And I about made up my mind to pray, and see if I couldn’t try to quit being the kind of a boy I was and be better. So I got down on my knees. But the words wouldn’t come. Why wouldn’t they? It weren’t no use to try and hide it from Him... or from me, either. I knowed very well why they wouldn’t come. It was because my heart weren’t right; it was because I weren’t square; it was because I was playing two sides at the same time. I was letting on to give up sin, but away inside of me I was holding on to the biggest one of all. I was trying to make my mouth say I would do the right thing and the clean thing, and go and write to that black man’s owner and tell where he was; but deep down in me I knowed it was a lie, and He knowed it. You can’t pray a lie -- I found that out.
So I was full of trouble, full as I could be; and didn’t know what to do. At last I thought of something; and I says, I’ll go and write the letter -- and then see if I can pray. Why, it was surprising, the way I felt as light as a feather just from thinking about it. So I got a piece of paper and a pencil, all glad and feeling good, and sit down and wrote:
Miss Watson, your slave Jim that run away is down here two miles below Pikesville, and Mr. Phelps has got him and he will give him up for the reward if you send. -- HUCK FINN.
I felt good and all washed clean of sin for the first time I had ever felt so in my life, and I knowed I could pray now. I didn’t do it straight off, but put the paper down and sat there thinking -- thinking how good it was all this happened so, and how near I come to being lost and going to hell.
And went on thinking. And got to
thinking over our trip down the river; and I see Jim before me all the time: in the day and in the night, sometimes in the light of the moon, sometimes in storms, and we a-riding along, talking and singing and laughing. But in it all I couldn’t seem to find no places to make me hard against him, but only the other way. I’d see him standing my watch on top of his instead of calling me, so I could go on sleeping; and see him how glad he was when I come back out of the fog; and when I come to him again in the wet land, up there where the feud was; and other times like that; and he would always call me honey, and do everything he could think of for me, and how good he always was; and at last I come to the time I saved him by telling the men we had smallpox on the raft, and he was so thankful, and said I was the best friend old Jim ever had in the world, and the only one he’s got now; and then I happened to look around and see that paper.
It was a close place I can tell you. I took it up, and held it in my hand. I was a-shaking, because I had to choose, forever, between two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, almost not even breathing, and then says to myself: “All right, then, I’ll go to hell” -- and I destroyed the letter.
It was awful thoughts and awful words, but they was said. And I let them stay said; and never thought no more about becoming good. I forced the whole thing out of my head, and said I would take up being evil again, which was in my blood, being brought up to it, and the other weren’t. And for a starter I would go to work and rob Jim out of being a slave again; and if I could think up anything worse, I would do that, too; because as long as I was in, and in for good, I might as well go the whole way.
Then I started thinking over how to get at it, and turned over an awful lot of plans before I come up with a plan that I liked. So then I found a tree-covered island that was down the river a piece, and as soon as it was almost dark I pushed off with my raft and went for it. I found a good hiding place there, and then turned in. I got up before it was light, and had my breakfast, and put on my new clothes, and tied up some other clothes and one thing or another in a big ball, and took the canoe and headed for the side of the river. I landed below where I judged was Phelps’s place, and put my clothes in a good hiding place in the trees, and then filled up the canoe with water and rocks and sent her to the bottom where I could find her again when I wanted her, about four hundred yards below a little side river timber yard.
Then I headed up the road, and when I passed the timber yard I seen a sign on it, “Phelps’s Timber,” and when I come to the farm houses, two or three hundred yards farther along, I kept my eyes wide open. The sun was well up by now, but I still didn’t see nobody around. That was good, because I didn’t want to see anyone just yet -- I only wanted to get a feel for the place. The way my plan went, I was going to turn up there from the village, not from below. So I just took a look, and moved along, straight for town. Well, the very first man I see when I got there was the duke. He was sticking up an advertisement for The King’s Foolishness -- three-nights only -- like that other time. Would you believe them robbers! I was right onto him before I could hide. He looked surprised, and says: “Hel-lo! Where’d you come from?” Then he says, kind of glad and enthusiastic, “Where’s the raft? -- got her in a good place?”
I says: “Why, that’s just what I was going to ask you, my lord.”
Then he didn’t look so happy, and says: “What was your reason for asking me?”
“Well,” I says, “when I seen the king in that pub yesterday I says to myself, we can’t get him home for hours, drunk as he is; so I went a-looking around town to put in the time and wait. A man up and promised me ten cents to help him pull a boat over the river and back to get a sheep, and so I went along; but when we was pulling him to the boat, the man left me holding the rope and went behind him to push him along. The sheep was too strong for me and pulled loose and run, and we went after him. We didn’t have no dog, and so we had to run after him all over the place until we tired him out. We never got him until dark; then we brought him over, and I started down for the raft. When I got there and seen it was gone, I says to myself, ‘They’ve got into trouble and had to leave; and they’ve took my black man, which is the only black man I’ve got in the world, and now I’m in a strange country, and ain’t got no wealth no more, or nothing, and no way to make my living;’ so I sat down and cried. I was sleeping under the trees all night. But what did become of the raft, then? -- and Jim -- poor Jim!”
“Blamed if I know -- that is, what’s become of the raft. That stupid old man had done some business and got forty dollars, and when we found him in the pub some of the local boys had tricked him out of every cent but what he’d spent for whiskey; and when I got him home late last night and found the raft gone, we said, ‘That little devil has robbed our raft and shook us, and run off down the river.’”
“I wouldn’t shake my black man, would I? -- the only black man I had in the world, and the only wealth.”
“We never thought of that. Truth is, I think we’d come to think of him as our black man; yes, we did think that -- God knows we had trouble enough for him. So when we seen the raft was gone and we had nothing, there weren’t anything for it but to give The King’s Foolishness another shake. And I’ve been two days now without a drink. Where’s that ten cents? Give it here.”
I had enough other money, so I give him ten cents, but begged him to spend it for something to eat, and give me some, because it was all the money I had, and I hadn’t had nothing to eat since yesterday. He never said nothing. The next minute he turns on me and says:
“Do you think that black man would blow on us? We’d skin him if he done that!”
“How can he blow? Ain’t he run off?”
“No! The old man sold him, and never give any to me, and the money’s gone.”
“Sold him?” I says, and started to cry. “He's my black man, and that was my money. Where is he? -- I want my black man.”
“Well, you can’t get your black man, that’s all -- so dry up your crying. Look here -- do you think you’d try to blow on us? I don’t think I trust you. Why, if you was to blow on us -- “
He stopped, but I never seen the duke look so ugly out of his eyes before. I went on a-crying, and says: “I don’t want to blow on nobody; and I ain’t got no time to blow, anyway. I got to turn out and find my black man.”
He looked kind of worried, and stood there with his papers in his hands, thinking, and squeezing up the front of his head. At last he says: “I’ll tell you something. We got to be here three days. If you’ll promise you won’t blow, and won’t let the black man blow, I’ll tell you where to find him.”
So I promised, and he says: “A farmer by the name of Silas Ph -- -- “ and then he stopped. You see, he started to tell me the truth; but when he stopped that way, and started to study and think again, I believed he was changing his plan. And so he was. He wouldn’t trust me; he wanted to make sure of having me out of the way the whole three days. So pretty soon he says: “The man that has him is named Abram Foster -- Abram G. Foster -- and he lives forty miles back here in the country, on the road to Lafayette.”
“All right,” I says, “I can walk it in three days. And I’ll start this very afternoon.”
“No you won't, you’ll start now; and don’t you lose any time about it, either, or do any talking by the way. Just keep a tight tongue in your head and move right along, and then you won’t get into trouble with us, do you hear?”
That was the rule I wanted, and that was the one I had been playing for. I wanted to be left free to work my plans.
“So move out,” he says; “and you can tell Mr. Foster what- ever you want to. Maybe you can get him to believe that Jim is your black man -- some stupid people don’t ask for papers -- at least I’ve heard there’s such down South here. And when you tell him the advertisement and the reward’s false, maybe he’ll believe you when you tell him why we printed them in the first place. Go along now, and tell him anything you want to; but just don’t work your mouth any b
etween here and there.”
So I left, and headed for the back country. I didn’t look around, but I kind of felt like he was watching me. But I knowed I could tire him out at that. I went straight out in the country as much as a mile before I stopped; then I came back through the trees toward Phelps’s. I knew I needed to start in on my plan straight off without wasting time, because I wanted to stop Jim’s mouth until these two could get away. I didn’t want no trouble with their kind. I’d seen all I wanted to of them, and wanted to get perfectly free of them.
Chapter 32
When I got there it was all quiet and Sunday-like, and hot and sunny; the workers was gone to the fields; and there was them kind of soft sounds of flies in the air that makes it seem so empty and like everybody’s dead and gone; and if a little wind shakes the leaves it makes you feel sad, because you feel like it’s spirits whispering -- spirits that’s been dead ever so many years -- and you always think they’re talking about you. As a general thing it makes a body wish he was dead, too, and done with it all.
Phelps’s was one of those little one-horse cotton farms, and they all look the same. A timber fence around a yard; steps over the fence made out of vertical logs in the ground, like barrels of different lengths, to climb over the fence with; some places in the big yard with a little sick grass growing in it, but mostly just smooth dirt, like an old hat with the soft part rubbed off; big log house for the white people -- with the holes stopped up with mud that had been white-washed some time or another; log kitchen, with a big wide, roofed footpath joining it to the house; log smoke-house back of the kitchen; three little log servant cabins in a line t’other side of the smoke-house; one little room all by itself away down against the back fence, and some other buildings down a piece the other side; box for ashes and a big kettle to make soap by the little room; bench by the kitchen door, with a bucket of water; dog asleep there in the sun; more dogs asleep around about; about three trees away off in a corner; some berry bushes in one place by the fence; outside of the fence a garden and a field of watermelons; then the cotton fields starts, and after the fields the trees.